Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Amerika, 2007

"Freeway Blogging": A problematic but inventive method of political protest.

Jonas Phillips is the third resident of Asheville, North Carolina to be arrested in recent weeks for displaying a pro-impeachment sign.

Unlike Mark and Deborah Kuhn, who were targeted for official abuse because of a display erected on their own property, Phillips was arrested for "freeway blogging" -- that is, displaying a sign on an overpass spanning the interstate near his workplace.

While different considerations apply to protests on "public" property, it's significant that Asheville authorities are finding it difficult to identify a specific offense with which to charge Phillips. That difficulty is symptomatic of institutional dishonesty: The Asheville Police Department can't afford to admit that it arrested Phillips because of the content of his sign, rather than because of some danger he protest posed to the public.

Last Wednesday (August 15), Phillips was "standing alone with my [Impeach Bush-Cheney] sign for about 10 minutes, when I was approached by Police Officer Russell Crisp," he recounted. "He asked me how long I was planning to stay there and I told him just a few more minutes because I had to go to work at 8:00. He asked for my ID and I obliged. I asked him if I was doing something wrong, and he said that his Sergeant was on the way and he was going to wait for him. So, I went back to my sign holding over the interstate."

If Phillips had been obstructing pedestrians, or imperiling motorists, Officer Crisp could have addressed the problem by warning the cooperative protester to leave. He didn't issue such a warning.

A few minutes later the Sergeant, Officer Randy Riddle, "showed up with a paper in his hand," continues Phillips. "He spoke briefly to Crisp, then walked over to me and told me to put down my sign, put my hands behind my back, and that I was under arrest! I was shocked and almost thought he was joking until he told me again to put down the sign and put my hands behind me and I was under arrest. So I peacefully agreed and he cuffed me. I asked him why I was being arrested, he told me I was in violation County Ordinance 16-2, (the print out in his hand that he didn't bother to read to me or show me.) He told me I was obstructing the sidewalk. I told him I was not and that officer Crisp had witnessed a guy walk by me moments before."

"Riddle yelled at me, `You were obstructing the sidewalk!' and `I'm sick of this sh*t!' then he said, `Here's your 15 minutes of fame buddy!' I looked back to see his name plate and he said in a mean condescending tone, `Yea, that's "Sergeant Riddle" get it right!' He then put me in Officer Crisp's police car. Riddle took my sign with him and I was taken downtown and booked by Crisp. I was never read my Miranda rights."

Two days later, the charges against Phillips had mutated from the relatively innocuous offense of "obstructing the sidewalk" -- which would hardly merit being handcuffed and stuffed into a police car -- to "endangering motorists."

“The intent [behind arresting Phillips] was public safety and the banner being a hazard,” insisted Asheville police Capt. Wade Wood. “That’s basically to the benefit of the motoring public," which ran an imperceptibly small chance of being endangered should the activist lose control of his 5'X1' sign. It's likelier that motorists would be killed in a bridge collapse, or perhaps in an accident involving falling space debris. But Wood had to pull some charge out of his emunctory aperture, and this was the best he could do.

Similar dishonest ingenuity has been on display in Kent, Ohio, where City Law Director James Silver announced plans to charge activist Kevin Egler with "littering" -- an offense carrying a fine of up to $500 -- for posting an "Impeach Bush" sign in a public garden. The original charge, advertising in a public space, proved useless because Engler's sign had no commercial content.

The littering charge is obviously an instance of content-based selective prosecution: Egler has presented dozens of photographs documenting the display of other posters -- including commercial advertisements and military recruiting pitches -- that were displayed without incident.

As I've noted before, many police departments increasingly operate under the "we'll find a reason" standard -- meaning that when given an opportunity officers will contrive some excuse to cite or arrest individuals who have committed no immediately recognizable offense. Cases like those of Jonas Phillips, Kevin Egler, and the Kuhns -- remember: three or more instances constitute a pattern -- suggest that police are particularly prone to display their creativity when dealing with certain forms of political protest.

In his valuable new book You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression, Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, has compiled dozens of accounts from Americans who endured harassment, arrest, and various forms of official mistreatment after exercising their right to protest peacefully.

In May 2004, Joe Previtera, a student at Boston College, staged a protest of the Abu Ghraib abuses outside a military recruiting center. He chose to mimic the iconic photograph of a hooded detainee standing atop a box with his arms outstretched and electrodes attached to his body.

Previtera was surrounded by four policemen who told him the bomb squad was on its way. He was arrested an jailed overnight on $10,000 bond, accused of making a "false bomb threat"; obviously, he hadn't made a bomb threat, but because one of the heroes in blue (they're all heroes, don't you know?) claimed to think the milk crate and wires could be a bomb, Previtera was charged with making a false threat. In the middle of his night in jail, Previtera was awakened by police who tried to catechize him about the virtues of the Iraq war: They "showed me pictures of U.S. soldiers with smiling Iraqi children," he recalled. "The officers told me these were pictures I'd never see in the media...."

Eventually the charges were dropped, but the point is that Previtera, like a growing number of others, spent time in jail for conducting a peaceful, legal protest the local police didn't like.

Rothschild describes how police in Miami, with $8.5 million in federal funding tucked into an $87 billion war appropriation, waged a literal street war against protesters during the December 2003 Free Trade of the Americas Summit. Police eagerly used tasers, pepper spray, rubber bullets, billyclubs, and other "non-lethal" weapons against peaceful and largely cooperative protesters.

At one point, riot police firing rubber bullets shot a female protester several times in the back; during the next morning's briefing, the black-clad champions of public order enjoyed a giddy laugh at the victim's expense:

According to Rothschild, Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who insisted that his troops had acted with proper "restraint," won praise nation-wide "for what is being called the `Miami Model'" of protest management.

The "Miami Model" could be described as Tiananmen Square minus the tanks, with non-lethal ammo ... for now:

With those images of our heroic local police in action fresh in your mind, please review this trailer for the 1986 ABC mini-series "Amerika," which portrayed the USA as a Soviet-dominated vassal state in which public order is maintained by Soviet-controlled UN peacekeeping troops in Imperial Stormtrooper outfits:

Adjusting for present geopolitical circumstances and relatively minor differences in the dominant ideology, "Amerika" in 1997 (as shown in the program of that name) is often not that radically different from America, 2007. Life is still relatively normal, despite the Terrorist Event That Changed Everything (a Soviet-engineered Electromagnetic Pulse in the television program, 9-11 for us).

10 comments:

I had a similar experience Constitution Day, Sep. 17, 2004, when I tried to hold up a sign saying "Honk if you love the Constitution" from an overpass. Didn't get arrested, but the back and forth between the officers and me is amusing. See http://constitutionalism.blogspot.com/2004/09/how-i-celebrated-constitution-day-and.html

Any updates on the police who arrested the Kuhn's in Asheville on his their OWN PROPERTY? Those officers should be fired and charged with breaking and entering, assault, whatever. If I was their police chief, that's what I would have done. Do the laws of public, peaceable assembly and protest apply everywhere in the U.S. or are there restrictions in some states or localities?

They hate us for our freedom!The G liberated Idaho from Randy Weaver and Texas from David Koresh.Recall Vicki Weaver was holding an assault-style baby in her arms at the time of our brave forces dispatching of her.The Branch Davidians were stockpiling similar assault-style babies also.Fortunately for America the same sniper who was at Ruby Ridge was also at Waco doing the noble and heroic duty.Time for the G to get tough with freeway bloggers.

I find it curious that local police, theoretically working for the benefit of local populations, behave more and more like federal agents and thought police employed to quell bogus "threats" to the community and/or national security. Perhaps this ominous trend has something to do with the proliferation of addictive federal law enforcement grants. Washington rarely funds anything without attaching strings. Mandating maximum speed limits and requiring various educational programs in the public schools are also examples of controls/agendas attached to partial federal funding.

Three years ago, "non-lethal ammo" killed a young woman in Boston. She was doing nothing more threatening than standing on the street after the Sox beat the Yankees. There were kids turning over cars and doing stupid stuff, but she wasn't one of them.

It is unfortunate how divided our country has become. It's also unfortunate how so many people have been totally brainwashed to the point where they are vehemently outraged over the Iraq War. I mean, isn't it outrageous that we toppled one of the world's most brutal, oppressive, murderous, imperialistic, fascist dictators? Isn't it outrageous that we are helping 25 million Iraqis set up a democracy that they themselves have endorsed with 3 elections with bigger percentage turnouts than we have here in the USA? Isn't it such a horrible atrocity that we are fighting against Islamic, extremist theocrats who want to establish a government in Iraq where women, homosexuals, non-muslims and other minorities would be routinely persecuted and killed, and where only a small number of Islamic clerics would have all the power and the average citizen would have none!? I mean, that is so unbelievably terrible! People who are against the war need to wake up from their Bush-Hate-Driven craziness. Maybe the cops won't feel the need to bust their balls.

That one clip showing the lawyer in the red blazer that got shot in the face is ridiculuous. Rubber bullets are not 'non-lethal' they are 'mostly non-lethal'. However, a shot the head or neck can severly injure or even kill a person. Police are supposedly taught this when trained in the use of these weapons so there is no excuse for shooting this woman in the head. She is fortunate that the distance from which the shot was fired and where the bullet hit on her head were such that she was not worse off. She should definitely sue, and I hope that she wins some obscene amount (which in most lawsuits pisses me off but not in this one) so that police everywhere get the message that non-lethal weapons still have the potential for lethality and as such they should not be fired indiscriminately into a crowd nor should you fire on a target where you cannot acquire a safe shot such as a woman crouched behind a poster where you cannot see where you would hit because if you are not careful you can be held responsible. The officer that fired the shot on her while she was crouched should be stuck in a desk job where he never again gets to wield a weapon in public.